Little Miss Nosy

Chapter Nineteen: Oh, Brother

- Edited -

The image I stored of Jacob in my mind never really changed much from the last time I saw him. In the last four years he's been gone I always imagined the same lanky build, shoulder length hair, and cold-eyed teenager I grew used to sharing a house with. The picture never changed because I assumed I would never see him again to see how well my guess matched reality.

But, here he is, looking the exact opposite of how I remembered, leaning back in his desk chair like a principal prepared to chastise a student with a long history of detentions.

"Here I thought you'd be happy to see me."

"I am," I confirm a bit too enthusiastically.

His long hair is gone, now shaved on the sides with some length sitting on top. The outline of his muscles show under a gray t-shirt and he finishes the look with a simple pair of black sweats. "You look...casual." I don't know what I envisioned a gang leader's closet to be made up of—suits and Armani watches, maybe—but this is far from what I imagined.

"Oh." Jacob looks down, pinches his shirt. "I'm off the clock. You wanna sit?"

Not really. The only places to sit are the bed, which you'd think is gray instead of red thanks to the layer of dust atop the comforter, or the floor, which would leave me too vulnerable. I bite my tongue and opt for the bed, perching on the far end of it.

"I-I don't know where to start."

"It's a lot." He nods, flipping through an old scrapbook mom and I put together as a present for him when we weren't sure he'd return home for Christmas. He didn't. "Take as long as you need."

I scoff. "How can you be so relaxed? Leant back, comfortable. So familiar with a place you abandoned years ago."

"Because I was always here," he says without looking up. "Sort of."

"What do you-"

"Your first day of high school, you came home crying because you had to eat lunch by yourself. Sophomore year, you fostered that cat who wouldn't stay off the back porch. Junior year, those assholes from school slashed your tires. Who do you think changed them in time for you to head out the next day? Senior year, little Logan climbing the lattice to sneak into your bedroom window. I always had eyes on you, Paige. One way or another. I never left. Not really."

To my immense displeasure, tears spring to my eyes. Jacob never left me. What he admitted is proof everyone was wrong about him. Carmen said he'd never come back, that he'd hate me if he did. Mom said he wouldn't be the same person. And that, at least a fraction of it, isn't true.

"Oh," is all I can say.

"I just told you I'd been watching you for years, and you don't seem freaked in the slightest."

"Call me crazy. You wouldn't be the first person to think that."

He's different, and not just physically. Jacob used to be short-tempered. I had to literally walk on eggshells around him because the sound of a creaky floorboard would piss him off. Now, his earthy eyes are vivid, alive. He's matured to the point where I have to shut down a theory that he's been replaced by a clone.

"So...you're back?"

He makes a noise somewhere between a chuckle and a scoff. "Paige, come on. I can't come back the way you want me to. I'd land my ass in jail for life. Normalcy is a thing of the past for me."

And just like that, I'm knocked from cloud nine, back in the familiar bedroom with my unfamiliar brother. For a moment I was twelve again. A year before Jacob began acting out, when he was the person I looked up to the most. And I was happy. "Then how? How are you here now? How have you been watching me all this time? There's been no sightings of you for years."